Diplomacy at the United Nations: The dual agenda of the 1992 security council summit

The Security Council summit meeting of 31 January 1992 was supposed to be a momentous event that would determine the course of the world body and international peace and security in the post‐Cold War era. Despite high expectations, though, the actual meeting did not produce much more than a broadly‐phrased declaration of good intentions. The article examines the hypothesis that the meeting had a dual agenda, with a hidden as well as a public part. It is argued that the main item on the hidden agenda was the confirmation, beyond any doubt or potential challenge, of Russia as the rightful successor to the USSR permanent seat on the Security Council. This suited well the weakened major remnant of the former Soviet Union as well as the other permanent members of the Security Council, especially the UK and France, who had good reasons to want to defer indefinitely any reexamination of the Council's composition and powers.     

Does Membership on the UN Security Council Influence Voting in the UN General Assembly?

Recent studies report that temporary members of the UN Security Council receive favorable treatment from the IMF, the World Bank, or in US foreign aid in exchange for their political support for permanent members. Nevertheless, few studies have examined whether this favorable treatment and these benefits have actually made any significant changes in the member states’ voting behavior in the United Nations. To explore this question, we investigate whether membership on the UN Security Council influences a state’s voting in the UN General Assembly. In the analysis of panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1946 to 2008, the empirical results show that elected members of the UN Security Council tend to behave similarly with permanent members, especially with the United States, as the number of loan programs signed with the IMF and the World Bank increases. Also, US foreign aid significantly increases temporary members’ vote coincidence with the United States and other permanent members. In this regard, this article contributes to our understanding of state voting behavior and power politics in international organizations.     

联合国安理会改革的程序与决策--以对日本的影响为中心

随着60届联大的闭幕,围绕着扩大安理会进行的一系列论战也告一段落。但是由此引发的各种问题,如联合国的发展方向、安理会的作用以及联合国改革的未来影响等都值得去重新思考。在这些问题中,安理会的扩大、加入的程序、成员国的资格等也都需要再继续认真研究。对于所有国家来说,加入安理会常任理事国涉及程序性的问题,也涉及策略性的问题,这些问题不解决就无法实现“常任梦”。从这种意义上说,日本“争常”的思想与行为对于深入研究联合国改革及其影响具有典型意义。     

High and Low Tide: Sino–American Relations and Summit Diplomacy in the Second World War

Studies of Chinese involvement in Allied relations during the Second World War tend to focus on the Cairo Conference of November 1943 and see it as the high point for China’s wartime diplomacy. This analysis argues that the Moscow Foreign Ministers’ Conference, held just prior to Cairo in late October–early November, was more important for the achievement of China’s longer-term interests. The participation at Moscow of Cordell Hull, the American secretary of state, was unique as the State Department was absent from almost all the Allied wartime summits. President Franklin Roosevelt liked to conduct his diplomacy personally. In Moscow, however, Hull represented the United States, and his patience and persistence led to the inclusion of China in the Four Nation Declaration that resulted from the meeting. That, in turn, meant that China was eventually included as a permanent member of the eventual United Nations Security Council and seen as a post-war Great Power. It was a more significant outcome than those resulting from the Cairo Conference.     

Multilateralism in a unipolar world: the UN Security Council and Iraq

The end of the cold war brought a new era in international politicsthat had the potential for creating a more cooperative and peacefulworld. At the heart of this ‘new world order’ wasto be the United Nations Security Council, which would finallybe able to fulfill its obligations under the UN Charter. Inthe immediate post-cold war years it appeared that this optimismwas well founded as the Security Council became increasinglyactive in authorizing peacekeeping and peace-building missions.Just over a decade later, however, the crisis over Iraq againbrought serious concerns regarding the UN's purpose and legitimacy.This article examines the circumstances surrounding the recentUN Security Council dispute in order to illuminate the meritsof multilateral cooperation. It also asks, more fundamentally,whether multilateralism can be sustained in a unipolar world.     

Regional involvement in peace operations: an analysis of the debate within the UN Security Council

The paper analyses the debates within the UN Security Council on the role of regional organisations in peace operations and examines associated pro and con arguments. The systemisation of the findings is facilitated through the application of SWOT analysis that requires an insight into the unit and system levels of analysis. The first one looks at regional organisations and studies the strengths and the weaknesses that could promote or obscure their greater involvement in peace operations. The second level studies the international political environment that could provide opportunities for greater regional involvement or pose threats (obstacles) to it. The study indicates that there is a clearly established numerical predominance of supporters of greater regional involvement in peace operations over the regio-sceptics. However, the conclusion is that while the permanent members of the UN Security Council continue to endorse such involvement in the field, they will keep avoiding the formalisation and institutionalisation of the role of regional organisations on a political level.     

External networks and institutional idiosyncrasies: the Common Security and Defence Policy and UNSCR 1325 on women,peace and security

In 2008, the Council of the European Union (EU) adopted a ‘Comprehensive Approach’ that outlines a strategy for securing gender mainstreaming; two years later, the Council introduced a set of indicators to assess its implementation. The EU was responding to the United Nations Security Council’s call for regional institutions to assist in implementing Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, adopted on 31 October 2000, concerning ‘women, peace and security’. This resolution sought to meet the ‘urgent need to mainstream a gender perspective into peacekeeping operations’. Considering that prior exposure to gender issues, resources and well-established relations with civil society and gender advocates are lacking, the adoption of both the Comprehensive Approach and the indicators, as well as the structures and procedures established since then as part of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, requires some explanation. This article draws on feminist institutionalist approaches to argue that the impetus for change came from individuals and groups within the EU who were involved in external networks, both above and below the supranational level, who seized on institutional idiosyncrasies that also shaped the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in important ways.     

Britain and Kashmir, 1948: “The Arena of the UN”

The Jammu and Kashmir dispute of 1947–1949 between India and Pakistan became the first inter-state conflict to be discussed at the United Nations Security Council. This analysis looks at the views of the government and the delegation of Great Britain, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, on Kashmir through the year of 1948. It argues that the British attitude was determined more by Imperial and Commonwealth strategic and ideological imperatives in South and Central Asia and the Middle East and less by the merits of the cases of the disputants. Operating within the twin backdrop of decolonisation and the Cold War, the British official mind juggled Kashmir's accession to India, India's complaint of aggression against Pakistan, and Pakistan's demand for a plebiscite in Kashmir with an eye to their own hopes and fears in a region that it understood as the key vantage on Communism and Islam.     

Shaping the future of UN peace operations: is there a doctrine in the house?

In the face of an unprecedented surge in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping activity over the past three years—with now almost 100,000 military, police and civilian personnel deployed on four continents in 18 operations—there is a need for the UN to develop a comprehensive doctrine that better defines what modern UN peacekeeping has become and that covers the full range of civilian peacebuilding activities that are now a standard feature of Security Council mandates. This paper serves as a primer and proposes an agenda for debate on such a doctrine. It summarises evolutions in thinking and practice over the past 15 years. It also highlights key conceptual challenges and political fault lines to be reconciled in order for a new comprehensive doctrine to enjoy broad support of the UN's 192 Member States, while still providing relevant guidance to thousands of personnel on the front-lines of the effort to help rebuild war-torn states.     

Humanitarian Emergencies and the International Criminal Court (ICC): Toward a Cooperative Arrangement between the ICC and UN Security Council

Erratum . International Studies Perspectives 6:4, 431-466
This article analyzes the role of humanitarian intervention in bringing together the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN Security Council. It argues that a framework for cooperation between the ICC and Security Council is needed to facilitate a coordinated response to humanitarian emergencies. One of the concepts explored is a mutual legitimacy push, or how the ICC and Security Council can lend effective assistance to one another when responding to humanitarian emergencies. Such a push will not only serve to enhance a response to humanitarian disasters but also close the "critical gap" between the moral legitimacy of international humanitarian action and the legality of the UN Charter. The article concludes that a cooperative relationship will not politicize the ICC, and that the ICC and the Security Council, can, through institutional re-engineering, achieve mutual political benefits.     

United Nations Security Council Reform Revisited: A Proposal

The United Nations [UN] came into being following the Second World War. Resembling earlier efforts of co-operation by the most powerful states of the international system, it was an attempt to effect global governance through the maintenance of international peace and security amongst states. However, led by its main executive organ, the Security Council, the UN has been unable to prevent and effectively deal with armed conflicts and mass atrocities in a number of situations. Over the years, the inability of the UN Security Council to take collective action has resulted in its ineffectiveness in dealing with war and humanitarian crises. This situation has led to calls for Security Council reform and has generated several initiatives to that end. This analysis discusses major shortcomings of the Security Council, analyses prominent reform initiatives, and introduces a proposal, the “Two-Layered Regional Model,” for Security Council reform.     

IAI Activities for the first quarter 1972

Responding to the increasing inadequacy of the UN and especially the Security Council (SC) in dealing with today's challenges and threats, Italy has actively taken part in the reform debate. Since the 1993 Memorandum and through the experience of the Coffee Club in the 1990s, the United for Consensus movement initiated in 2004 and its current mandate as non-permanent member of the SC for the 2007–08 period, Italy has campaigned against any increase in the number of individual permanent seats, which it feels would undermine its role and be an obstacle to a genuine European approach to SC issues. Yet, given the difficulties of SC reform, Italy cannot afford to limit itself to a merely obstructionist policy, which could prove sterile in the long run. Italy must promote and implement concrete initiatives that have the potential to re-establish the body's authority and relaunch multilateral dynamics at the international level, while reaffirming its own importance in the global arena.     

Squaring the circle? Collective and distributive effects of United Nations Security Council reform

Changing the composition and voting system of the Security Council, in an effort to increase the institution’s global legitimacy, is proving to be one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome for the global community of states represented in the United Nations (UN). This paper demonstrates that due to institutional hurdles, it is considerably more difficult today than it was in the early years of the UN to reach a winning coalition in the General Assembly to secure Security Council reform. In addition, the paper analyzes the effects that adapted patterns of voting, as prescribed by recent reform proposals, would have on the distribution of power among UN member states in the Security Council and on the probability that this institution can form a winning coalition, i.e., reach decisions. Our power and decision capacity computations are based on (modified) Penrose-Banzhaf-Coleman measures.     

In Search of a European Dimension in the UN Security Council

Both Belgium and Italy want to give their current mandate in the UN Security Council a European dimension. Yet, the conclusion that they are natural partners in doing so may be premature. Before focussing on Belgian and Italian objectives, the article presents the current state of the ongoing reform processes in Brussels and New York and of EU actorness in the Security Council more generally, as both are critical for estimating the prospects for a stronger European profile. It concludes by discussing the possibilities and constraints that the non-permanent members face within this framework.     

The humanitarian responsibilities of the United Nations Security Council: Ensuring the security of the people1

The United Nations Charter confers on the Security Council prime responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. Yet these very concepts are undergoing radical change. More than the absence of war, peace has come to mean harmony both within and among nations. It has acquired a dimension far larger than the original State-centred notion of the Charter. Security connotes inclusion, cohesion, and integration - a sense of belonging to a society and a prevailing international order that is predicated on fairness and respect for differences and human dignity. Today, especially given the rise in conflicts of a non-international character, the Council musturgently review the appropriateness of existing instruments and traditional diplomacy. The author calls for better links between the UN, the Security Council, NGOs, and civil-society organisations; and proposes legal and practical mechanisms both to afford better protection to aid workers and to ensure that, when they are applied, sanctions regimes are effective means of placing pressure on those responsible for the abuse of power.     

Hitting the right target: EU and Security Council pursuit of terrorist financing

This article analyses one specific instance of the use of targeted sanctions to combat the financing of terrorism by the European Union on behalf of the United Nations Security Council. The case raised a number of issues involving the use of sanctions against non-state actors and provoked a legal challenge at the European Court of Justice. These European court cases have been portrayed as a challenge to the use of targeted sanctions by the Security Council to maintain international peace and security. The fundamental critique here is that targeted sanctions must adhere to due process and the rule of law in order to protect individual human rights.     

中美俄:三边关系互动新趋势

中美俄三边关系是当今世界上最重要的三边关系。在共同应对国际金融危机的大目标下,特别是在奥巴马就任美国总统之后,三边关系出现了一些新的转机,其中处于较低水平的美俄关系出现了较大的调整。作为联合国常任理事国的中美俄三国,其相互关系的良性互动必然有利于世界的和平、稳定与发展。因此,不排除未来三国之间建立某种对话与协调机制的可能。     

François Mitterrand’s Visit to Sarajevo, 28 June 1992

At 10:30 in the morning on 28 June 1992, a Dauphin helicopter landed at Sarajevo airport carrying a precious cargo: the French president, François Mitterrand. Since the beginning of the Bosnian War, Bosnian Serb forces had controlled the airport and restricted the delivery of humanitarian aid to the city’s destitute population, which formed an important cornerstone of their siege strategy. In reaching the airport, the president secured its re-opening and, with it, the commencement of one of the longest humanitarian airlifts in history. However, Mitterrand’s visit also had implications and significance beyond the Bosnian capital. The visit secured humanitarian intervention through the United Nations as the international community’s modus operandi for conflict resolution in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Through its permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council and enthusiastic engagement with humanitarian intervention, France would shape the intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina and thus continue to justify its position amongst the world’s Great Powers.     

试论新世纪日本对东盟的外交政策

新世纪日本对东盟的外交政策,摆脱了经济外交的单一性,在发展经济关系的基础上,取得了区域合作的突破性进展,并加强与东盟的政治对话、安全合作以及军事交流,旨在主导亚洲经济一体化,扩大在东南亚地区的政治势力和军事安全影响,并争取成为安理会常任理事国和国际社会的重要一极,逐步实现政治大国的目标。